"This gets tricky for those philosophers who want to maintain a consistently anti-speciesist stance. That’s because it is prima facie speciesist for vegans to say that the starving or unhealthy should be allowed to kill and eat other animals, but not kill and eat other humans, since that suggests that other animals’ lives are worth less than ours. On the other hand, allowing the starving and unhealthy to kill and eat healthy humans if other animals abound is a tough sell.
So vegans who allow humans to eat flesh if their health or immediate survival depends on it, but want to maintain their claim to anti-speciesism, have two options. They can either argue that it’s not speciesist to allow the starving and unhealthy to always eat other animals before they would do the same to humans, or they can take the more consistent route and say that all sentient beings are equally fair game if you must eat sentient beings to survive or thrive."
http://letthemeatmeat.com/
Perhaps someone else can check out a few of the articles on the site and start up a good discussion here. Debate is always good, I think!
